


a mosiac of almost-but-not

by The-Immortal-Moon (LunaKat)



Series: The Fault In His Automail (EdWin Week 2020) [2]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: EdWin Week 2020, F/M, Homunculus Edward Elric, Identity Issues, Introspection, One-Sided Attraction, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:20:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23966044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/The-Immortal-Moon
Summary: For EdWin Week 2020. Day 2: MemoriesHe wonders if he could have loved her back, if he was human.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Edward Elric/Winry Rockbell
Series: The Fault In His Automail (EdWin Week 2020) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1726453
Comments: 18
Kudos: 64





	a mosiac of almost-but-not

Sloth, like all homunculi, is a being composed of memories.

Homunculi are two-dimensional creatures. They are a single core identity glossed over by a thick, clear lacquer of inhumanity—so you can see the truth not-so-hidden underneath but can’t quite reach it. Even when you chip away at the lacquer, now you’ve left the core exposed to the elements and it’s all but guaranteed to wear away as time goes on.

Maybe homunculi were meant to be human, but there’s a difference between _meant to be_ and _supposed to be_ , isn’t there?

What a tragedy it is, when you can’t tell yourself from You-But-Not.

Sometimes, Sloth thinks he is closer to _real_ than other homunculi. Not _complete_ , of course—complete can never achieved when all your memories aren’t yours. You can’t compare your thoughts of you to what others think of you when what others think of you is _also_ what you think of you. Homunculi are, quite literally, no one without their creators.

But he has more than one creator, and those two sets of memories aren’t identical.

What that means is: Sloth has a third dimension tucked away behind that glossy varnish of not-quite-right that all homunculi have. He is Big Brother _and_ Best Friend _and_ Failure, all in one. And three is a fraction compared to the hundreds of identities that humans construct for themselves in their short, pathetic lives—but it’s more than just two, and that’s something.

Master says homunculi don’t have memories at all, which is not wrong, but not right either. They just don’t have their _own_ memories, is the problem.

(You remember Risembool, remember the way the emerald grass undulated across the rippling hills as a stray breeze came along, warm and summer-bright. You remember it the way you remember dreaming and laughter and the name that is not-yours. You remember it like you remember grieving, like you remember a tragedy that never happened.

You remember the Girl who dared not-you to a race, who could roll down the slope fastest; her sapphire eyes sparking a challenge that not-you couldn’t refuse, because no way was not-you going to let some _stupid gearhead_ make a fool out of you)

Homunculi are, really, just blueprints of a person that were drawn up by someone else. So the choices they have are to try adhering and inevitably fail, or vehemently reject but never escape. Perhaps therein lays the tragedy of it. At least Sloth, with two versions of the same identity, can pick and choose.

Big Brother is all smiles and childhood bickering and days spent holed up in your father’s study. It’s more complete, fuzzy at the edges with constant idealization and idolization. Waiting by the river when arguments got out of hand. Knees stained with grass and a disdain for all things dairy-related. Half-buried remnants of longing and grief that don’t belong. Enough familial love that just thinking about it _hurts_.

Best Friend is all laughter and belligerent teasing and freedom from the stuffy inside in favor of crisp sunshine raining down from above. Incomplete in places, but room for flaws to stand out in grainy imperfection. Firecracker-passion and stubborn willfulness that makes you want to pull your hair out and bickering over the virtues of alchemy versus automail. Scoffing at tears, concern dressed in scolding, a too-short lifetime of exasperated affection.

Is it cruel to say he prefers the latter? ...probably.

( _Brother_ , says the one-you-now-call-Fullmetal, the Stranger-But-Not with short hair and hazel eyes, _you really ought to apologize to Winry._

 _Who is Winry?_ you want to ask, but not-you is already scoffing, _What do **I** have to apologize for? **She** started it!_

 _She was crying_ , Fullmetal points out.

 _She’s **always** crying!_ not-you retorts, and you have no idea if that’s true or not, because only not-you seems to hold that opinion, and the memories you have don’t even belong to not-you.)

Don’t get him wrong; this isn’t a choice he makes out of spite. It isn’t that simple. Nothing is, when you are yourself but also not, because “you” is someone else and “you” were never supposed to exist, and in a way, “you” still don’t.

It’s just that Best Friend offers more autonomy than Big Brother. Siblings only happen because your parents either thought you were lonely or fucked one too many times without protection. Family is an obligation shackled to your very blood, just as binding as the You-But-Not and almost as painful. When you cut down to the core of it, relationships between brothers bloom from proximity and a mutual agreement to get along, because you’ll be sharing a space until adulthood and both go crazy if you don’t.

Friendships, though. Friendships are something forged and fortified. Friendships take time and energy and effort to maintain, and they don’t start because your parents decided to have another kid. Friendships, by their very nature, are a choice. _Your_ choice.

Him-But-Not, for some reason or another, _chose_ to associate with that Girl. The memories she gave are not quite as crisp or clear, but he has enough practice bringing her image to mind—a blonde bob the color of corn-silk, calloused little hands smelling perpetually of machine oil, eyes that glittered cerulean from indignant tears. She does not burn the undersides of his eyelids like Fullmetal does.

Something about her drew Him-But-Not in, again and again, to the point where her version events are etched finely and indelibly with Best Friend.

(The first memory you have— _you_ , rather than not-you—of her is the one where her blood painted the concrete basement floor, and some man in a military uniform descended down the steps with a frantic, apron-wearing woman at his heels, each one scooping up a broken alchemist without even pausing to looking at you.

The other one, Fullmetal, hadn’t looked your way since the initial scream, too busy shivering though pain and apologies. But her eyes wavered, stricken with guilty horror, on your twisted form the whole time as she was carried away.)

Ah, but then again, maybe that was proximity, too. Both sets of memories say she lived next door (although “next door” in Risembool, apparently, means “on the next hill”), so perhaps they merely gravitated towards each other the way people naturally do, to alleviate their own loneliness. Especially children—because all those memories shimmer with innocence and carefree joy, so they were either children or painfully, brokenly naïve—are not particularly picky about their companions until they grow older, learn what is good for them and what is not.

On the other hand, children are also more perceptive than most people give them credit for. When Sloth becomes Auric Bradley and plays Big Brother to Selim, he often finds himself surprised by how much the child picks up on.

And they always fought, didn’t they? Him-But-Not and her. Bickered and screamed and spat until their throats were raw. Fits where, by all accounts, malice should have bloomed to eclipse camaraderie. Yet, always, always, always, they were drawn back together by some invisible pull that had them swallowing back their pride and mumbling apologies and then moving on as though nothing happened.

Was that just children, brushing aside minor arguments? Or was it something more, something deeper, that just hadn’t matured yet?

(After Lab 5 exploded, you go to the hospital to gaslight Fullmetal again, and you see her—she is not as you-not-you remember. Grown now, taller, with feminine curves in her adolescent frame and a budding beauty coloring her face. Hair spilling past her shoulders from a streaming sunlight tail, ears glittering with eye-catching baubles, metal legs exposed by a pleated skirt. The chime of her laughter sends you ducking behind a corner, peering at her cautiously through a golden fringe you didn’t ask for, as she speaks to a military man with glasses that Master has declared dangerous.

She laughs again. How odd, that not-you didn’t remember that laugh. That she and Fullmetal didn’t encode that into your memories. You feel oddly cheated.

Unbidden, you think, _Al and I fought over who would marry you._ )

Or maybe he’s just reading too much into it. They are _childhood_ memories, after all. By definition, that makes them more unreliable than the usual blueprints homunculi struggle to escape. These are fingerprint-smudged and melted-sugar sticky and crayon-colored by nostalgia.

It would be easier to just ignore it all. Wash it clean and start over blank. How much easier it is to live, when you don’t have pieces of your creator rattling around inside your not-soul. They aren’t the person you’re supposed to be any more than you are, so why is it _their_ fingerprints bruising your being? Why it is _their_ essence that plagues you, disguised cleverly as another person, just as you are a failed product disguised cleverly as an almost-human?

Master says homunculi don’t have memories at all, when what she means is _the memories you have aren’t yours and aren’t You-But-Not’s and you shouldn’t care_.

It would be easier to just not care. Such a shame it’s not the simple. Perhaps therein lies the tragedy.

(Shortly after Wrath joined, when you found a spare moment when you both were free from prying ears and eavesdropping eyes, you find yourself asking, before you can even think to stop yourself, _What was she like?_

Immediately, Wrath stiffens, the lines in his throat twitching as he looks up at you with guarded eyes, asking, _She, who?_

It takes you a moment to realize he thinks you mean his creator, the Mother who longed for her child. Which makes sense, you suppose, because homunculi are dead planets set into orbit around a distant sun and Wrath cannot help what or who is the focal point of his universe, the pith of his identity, any more than you can. At least, unlike him, you have more than one thing binding you to the land of the living. You have the push and the pull of the tides, constantly vying for your attention, and you can choose.

 _Not her_ , you say. _The blonde girl. With the earrings and the automail legs, I mean._

Confusion flickers on Wrath’s face, but he obliges you, because he almost-trusts you, and his eyes roll back in thought. _I dunno. She was nice, I guess?_

 _Nice_ , you repeat, tasting the word and finding it strangely lacking.

Wrath watches you, seeming fascinated by you, this being with three dimensions and two overlapping cores instead of a single faulty one. You pretend not to notice.

Absently, you say, _I wonder who she would have chosen, if it ended in a draw._

_Huh?_

_Nothing. Never mind._ )

Water is, inherently, the most easily manipulated element. Earth is stationary, remaining so of its own free well and acquiescing only to backbreaking labor. Air has freedom, can go wherever it pleases and resists capture. Fire is alive in a way the homunculi only wish they could be and attempting to contain it ends in tragedy.

But water has no will of its own. It is the ultimate passive force. When it is poured, it has no choice but to be compelled by gravity, and takes on the shape of its container without even a word leveled in protest. It freezes and boils on the whims of external forces, then becomes no more than a stagnant puddle when no forces deign to act upon it.

Perpetual victim of the tides, the endless push (big brother) and pull (best friend).

But for all the struggle, those two forces flow effortlessly into one another. One to the other and then back again. Too cruel to be indecision, too practiced to be coincidence.

Perfectly synchronized. An endless balancing act.

...it’s exhausting, sometimes.

But Sloth is water, and he has no choice in what shape he takes. No choice in which way he flows and which way he doesn’t. He likes the idea of it, the concept—the autonomy of choosing a Friend rather than growing to love a Brother. But it’s just that; a concept. Without a riverbed, water has no direction in which its current takes. Without ripples on its surface, water grows stagnant and stale and loses its purity as filth infects it.

The memories are _meant_ to be his, but there’s a difference between _meant to be_ and _supposed to be_. They aren’t his, aren’t even His-But-Not’s. Not cultivated by his own hands, slow and sacred. No more than an outside force acting upon him. A ripple on the stagnant surface of his not-soul.

What a tragedy it is, when you can’t tell yourself from You-But-Not.

( _What about Al?_

_What about him?_

_Are you going to kill him?_ )

Sometimes, when he is in a particularly defiant and whimsical mood, he wonders what would happen if water got the choice of which way it would flow. If it had the opportunity, the will, to settle between push and pull, to resist one but not the other, he wonders which force it would settle upon. Or if it would resist both entirely, if it had the power, and would instead settle upon something entirely new.

He wonders if could add another layer over the veneer of not-human, if Master felt generous enough with her Philosopher’s Stone.

He wonders if he could have loved her back, if he was human.

(When she asks you what you call yourself, you entertain the notion of not answering, because you are hesitant to give her more of you than she already has—but then you find yourself relenting anyway, because you are water and water does not have the will to resist its container.

Something in her eyes dims, then, and she smiles like a tragic ending as she replies, _Suits you._

If you could, you would have hated her, just for that.)

Sloth, like all homunculi, is a being composed of memories. But those memories aren’t his. Never were, and never will be.

And therein lies the tragedy.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this _probably_ wasn't what the prompt meant, but this is immediately what I thought of, and besides, the world needs more Homunculus!Ed/Win.


End file.
